Thursday 11 December 2014

The PhotonPhotography Lightroom Workflow - Keeping those family and business photos together

Do you use Lightroom? Do you want to keep those family and business photos together in the same catalog & still being able to pull them up separately when you need to? Read on, because this time I am sharing my Lightroom workflow, to give you a full solution organising and selecting the best of your shots...

I have read many reviews on Lightroom workflows, from simple to extremely complex - the one thing I have not seen in these articles is how to deal effectively with the issue of keeping your family and business photos together in the same catalog and still have full control over those. While separate catalogs would work for professional photographers who keep each client in one LR catalog, for us, enthusiasts this is just not practical, we go on Holiday with our family, take pictures of our kids in one moment, and a minute later we shoot that fantastic landscape which will later be uploaded to 500px... There is no point to put these to different catalogs, it is cumbersome to have them in separate folders too, so how to keep them organised?

In this post I will walk you through my LR workflow.  The basics of the workflow comes from Scott Kelby, he needs no introduction when it is about LR. I have made some significant tweaks though to fit the workflow to my own needs. Let's start diving into my method!

Sunday 7 December 2014

A Day on the Sea in Madeira

Hi everybody, I am back again with the story of a great day out during our trip to Madeira island in Portugal. This little island is in the middle of the Atlantic, a volcanic island with flowers, incredible green forests, levada channels to hike along, and great food too!  But I am digressing... This time I just want to tell you about our trip on the deck of the 1:1 copy of Santa Maria, the lead ship of Christopher Colombus, the discoverer of the New World, America. 


  To start, the ship is really fabulous - being on it really feels like you stepped back a few centuries. Of course you re not sailing, although I hear when the wind is right, it can do that too. The trip is along the coast of Madeira departing from Funchal, and last about 2 hours and another 2 hours back to the harbor. 


Wednesday 3 December 2014

Going Full Frame with the D750, Part II.

Hi everybody, I am back again with the second part of my previous blog entry about the new full frame Nikon D750.  This time I have taken it outdoors, eager to capture the first shots at the lake near my house. Unfortunately the weather was not the best, zero interesting light, dull, hence the pictures do not rock, and yet I was still satisfied with the results I have got. The D750 combined with the Nikon 24-70mm f2.8 lens gave some reasonable images, despite the dull weather.

First, I have just took a few shots to get used to the full frame lens :

Worked with auto ISO, letting the D750 decide the sensitivity, since I handheld the camera. This test of course was as much dependent on the lens, as on the camera. F8 gave really nice sharpness as expected.


Saturday 29 November 2014

Going Full Frame with a D750

Today was a very exciting day for me: my new camera arrived, equipped with a brand new lens! Since I got involved with digital photography I had only two cameras, started with a Nikon D5000 and in the last two and a half years I was shooting with a D7000. 

But I was always wondering about full-frame: would this make a difference with my images? And while I know that the photographer's vision  is the most important component, in this art technology and vision have to work together to constantly to push for better and better results. After having my fare share of images with APS-C DSLRs,  now it was time to move one notch up to the world of full-frame cameras. 

So my new D750 arrived today, with the 24-70mm f2.8 professional lens, a big boy representing one of the Nikon "Holy Trinity" zoom lenses.  With this lens the D750 really dwarfed the D7000, epecially with the 16-85mm DX lens mounted. 



After un-boxing and holding the body for the first time, I instantly noticed how light it was. First I thought it was lighter than my D7000 - and certainly if feels lighter compared to its own size.  The buttons and the ergonomics of the camera were instantly familiar to me since the D7000 practically has the same layout. The live view switch moved a little lower, and there is a safety lock on the main dial which switches between the various modes the D750 - this one seems to me a little superfluous, I never accidentally moved from aperture mode to shutter priority on my D7000, and I have to pay attention now not to force the dial without pushing down the safety lock.  I will get used to it. 

Thursday 27 November 2014

Thanksgiving Day

So, today is Thanksgiving Day. Why does that matter to me as a European? Most people on the continent (how the British call Europe:-) do not give a hoot about it, but once you have lived in the US for a while you realise that this is a great Holiday, which unites people over there despite differences in religion. And that is a good thing, especially in today's world with so many problems, hatred, suspicion and prejudice. 
But I wanted to share my story. I worked in the US for over 4 years as a postdoc (a scientist who has not much money:-), arriving from a socialist country in 1996I was alone, just started a month before, all my possessions fitted into a single suitcase (many of them are my favourite books, obviously no E-book readers then!) worked in the lab all the time, and had no idea about Thanksgiving. My boss asked me one day before Thanksgiving where I was about to celebrate.  I replied that most likely at home in my empty apartment, alone. She immediately invited me to join her family the next day and celebrate together. 

"Nobody should be alone  at Thanksgiving" -she said.

 It was not a big party, really close family of hers only, yet I was welcomed as a stranger, and this is how I spent my first Thanksgiving with people I did not know before and strangely I found something there which I could only compare to a Christmas feeling with my own family. 

I left the US a long time ago, but I celebrate Thanksgiving every year since then.

See you next time! 




Wednesday 26 November 2014

The First Blog Entry

Everybody needs to start somewhere... I thought long and hard about having a blog, by now everybody has one, so it is not a trendsetting exercise for sure. The question was always whether I will have something important to talk about, and by now it is obvious: the  blog will be about photography. Photography grew on me in the last 3 years - so much happened, I have learnt a great deal, maybe it is time to give something back... I am still not sure how I will like it, whether I will be able to keep at it, but one only finds out by trying. 

So what will the blog be about? Currently I am thinking of our travels, photo blog, equipment reviews,  post-processing, that sort of stuff. Come along this ride, let's do this together:-)

See you next time!